Mass Formation Is Nothing New - It's The Goal Of Public Education And Spectator Sports

Malone's article is a useful thing to have out there, as is DeSmet's analysis, but if you think about it, people have been primed for this for their entire lives.

It's kind of interesting, it's as if "mass formation" is a new phenomenon, starting with the COVID thing, but it's not, it's been going on for some time - actually a long time. People who go to public school have been primed for it all of their lives - in fact, that's one of the specified functions of public education: "Compounding our error is the fact that the national literature holds numerous and surprisingly consistent statements of compulsory schooling's true purpose. We have, for example, the great H. L. Mencken, who wrote in The American Mercury for April 1924 that the aim of public education is not

'to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. . . . Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim.. . is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States . . . and that is its aim everywhere else.'

Because of Mencken's reputation as a satirist, we might be tempted to dismiss this passage as a bit of hyperbolic sarcasm. His article, however, goes on to trace the template for our own educational system back to the now vanished, though never to be forgotten, military state of Prussia. And although he was certainly aware of the irony that we had recently been at war with Germany, the heir to Prussian thought and culture, Mencken was being perfectly serious here. Our educational system really is Prussian in origin, and that really is cause for concern."

"[T]o reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality." That's mass formation, and Mencken described it in 1924, 98 years ago.

Gatto, in this article, cites two major purposes in public education, which prime people for mass formation:

"1) The adjustive or adaptive function. Schools are to establish fixed habits of reaction to authority. This, of course, precludes critical judgment completely. It also pretty much destroys the idea that useful or interesting material should be taught, because you can't test for reflexive obedience until you know whether you can make kids learn, and do, foolish and boring things.

2) The integrating function. This might well be called "the conformity function," because its intention is to make children as alike as possible. People who conform are predictable, and this is of great use to those who wish to harness and manipulate a large labor force."
from "Against School" by John Taylor Gatto, at https://wesjones.com/gatto1.htm

Reflexive, uncritical obedience to authority, and conformity - that's the root of mass formation - lack of critical thinking and analysis, and conformity, those are how mass formation is produced. And this mass formation is reinforced by professional sports and political rallies, that's why these things are subsidized to the tune of billions of dollars by governments - across the world, if you come to think of it.

The "woke phenomenon" and "critical race theory" and all of that nonsense only works to create a mass formation when people are conditioned to react to stimuli - without any sort of critical analysis - in a reflexive manner. If you *think* about it, all of that stuff is really ridiculous, it makes no sense - and it isn't intended to, it's just straight stimulus/response - emotions, not reason, not intelligent analysis, are called for. Facebook asks "how do you react to that", emojis are reactions, Fox News anchors ask their guests for their reactions - and on TV, there's no time for critical analysis, just reflexive uncritical reaction. Twitter, with its tweets, is all about reaction to stimuli, not much critical analysis possible when responses are limited to 140 characters. Do this for every waking hour, and the ability to critically analyze atrophies, and it's easy to create mass formations.